


left-hand man

by Feste



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Awkward Flirting, Decidedly Illegal Business Practices, I've Never Been To Jamba Juice, M/M, Why Am I Hungry?, Why Is Every Chapter Food-Related?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-08-31 17:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8587444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feste/pseuds/Feste
Summary: All Kravitz wanted to do was drink a smoothie and look at a cute guy. Preferably simultaneously.





	1. Chapter 1

Today isn’t Kravitz’s day.

Most days aren’t favorable to Kravitz, which makes this particularly bad day stand out, but not as much as it might have otherwise. He wakes up alone, eats breakfast alone, commutes to work in bumper-to-bumper traffic alone and spends the whole day ignoring his cubicle neighbors as much as he can until he gets to clock off before returning to that same empty apartment. Then he curls up in a king-sized bed by himself and the whole cycle starts again.

That’s what’s normal for Kravitz. Shitty, but normal.

Out of everything subpar in his life, the one good thing he can count on is the chance to take lunch off and sip nervously at a smoothie while trying to pretend he isn’t checking out the barista who’d served it to him. Kravitz doesn’t even know the guy’s name; every week, he’s somehow obtained a different employee nametag. The first time he’d been working and Kravitz had happened by, it had said Greg; then Rosalind; then Louis, then Aki, then Maria, then dozens more Kravitz has long since lost track of.

There are some things that stay constant, though; his hands are always so soft and he never seems to scrub away the last traces of glittering eyeshadow around his half-lidded gaze before coming into work, which makes Kravitz think about the secret life he must have, makes Kravitz wonder how he dresses when he gets to kick the apron and starched shirt to the curb. Do those loose bangles around his wrists multiply? Does he always tie his long hair back, or does he let it frame his face?

Kravitz doesn’t want his idle daydreaming to go anywhere; he can barely look the man in the eye, for one, and wouldn’t want to make him uncomfortable at his literal workplace, for another. Maybe most importantly of all, he’s content with having this one small, nice thing stay exactly as it is, and too scared to ask for anything even slightly closer to romance. There’s some pitiful comfort in knowing that as dull and boring as his life is, he can always count on a routine that barely changes that doesn't depend on other people.

But on the worst, most unpredictable day of Kravitz’s year, routine isn’t something he gets to have.

That day is a Wednesday, because of course it is. He gets held up at the office ten minutes into his half-hour lunch break when the new guy from Human Resources spills coffee all over Kravitz’s desk but doesn’t stick around to help him clean it up. Then Jess pretends she doesn’t see him running for the only working elevator, which means he has to wait another five to make the trip down, spending all five of those minutes cursing his company’s cheap-ass policies and both of the broken elevators under his breath.

When he finally makes it across the spacious courtyard and into the same place he always eats, the situation gets that much worse.

Sometimes the object of his fantasies takes a day off work, which Kravitz always finds kind of disappointing but understands — given that he has to serve some of the people that Kravitz has seen wander in here from the cluster of office buildings, he’s probably long since earned a year off — and it seems like this disappointing Wednesday is going to be one of those days. He distantly scans the unfamiliar form behind the counter, noting that whichever part-time hire is in today is short, looks so young he probably gets carded at PG-13 movies, and doesn’t have a name tag.

Then he stops, refocuses, and registers that the beaming figure in front of him is literally an elementary schooler.

“Hello, sir,” that elementary schooler chirps up at Kravitz. “What can I get for you?”

A voice chimes in from farther back as the STAFF ONLY door swings open. “You don’t have to call all the customers that, kiddo.”

And there’s the man of his dreams, who eyes Kravitz vaguely and doesn’t even wait to hear him order before sidling over to make the same incomprehensible mixture of fruit, grains, and smoothie that Kravitz always gets. For a few seconds, he’s caught in a feedback loop of being grateful he’s such a regular that his favorite doesn’t need clarification, then nervousness about why there’s a literal child in a custom-sized apron, then fascination with the orange flecks of makeup clinging to those long eyelashes, all the thoughts mixing themselves up over and over until the dish thuds down in front of him and the barista is suddenly so very close.

“That’ll be six dollars and twenty-nine cents.”

“Uh,” says Kravitz. He gestures at the boy, casting questioning eyes at a carefully neutral spot just to the left of the other man’s head to keep the two of them from looking directly at one another, praying that his meaning gets across because he’s suddenly lost all the words to describe how much this shouldn’t be a question he even has to ask. “Uh?”

“It’s Bring Your Kid To Work Day, and this is like, my kid,” the barista says, his voice so light and airy that he appears entirely unconcerned about why Kravitz might be asking. As if it’s somehow natural for his son to be behind the counter serving drinks and that anyone who questioned the idea of it must be an idiot.

Kravitz rubs the back of his neck and bites his lip. “This is a Jamba Juice, not a corporate office.”

The polite cheerfulness disappearing to a huff that’s no less smug and self-assured, all Kravitz gets for his genuine confusion — confusion about why an eight year old is _working at a Jamba Juice_ , mostly, but there’s also a little bit of dismayed acceptance that he’d never even considered the possibility of his secret crush probably being married — is an eye roll and a cocked hip.

“We can’t all crawl out of whatever, whatever fuckin’ suit factory birthed you, darling,” he answers. “Some of us have to work jobs with less tax fraud and extremely illegal offshore accounting for a living, you dig? I’m not gonna deprive my Ango of a national holiday just ‘cause I don’t steal old lady pensions.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence, a pause where Kravitz is trying to process the fact that an upsettingly pretty man he’s pined after for months just insulted his entire career path over an untouched Açaí Primo Bowl that’s still sitting on the counter, so said gorgeous barista uses the opportunity to turn away from Kravitz in a whirl of movement. He pats the attentive little boy on the head, a careful tousle of the hair smoothing some stray strands back into place.

“Remember what Grandpops said about swearing, pumpkin?”

Ango — which is probably a nickname, but God only knows for what — brightens up at the chance to recite something for an audience in a way that even beats out the sheer uncanny delight with which he’d asked Kravitz for his order earlier. There’s a disarming edge to his happiness, sparkling eyes that make it difficult to stay upset at his presence for too long despite Kravitz’s best efforts.

“Not to do it until I turn eighteen or I have to put money in the swear jar.”

The barista, already turning to Kravitz once more with an eyebrow raised, pats his son on the head again without glancing back over. “Yep, you got it, Aang.”

Everything about this scene is decidedly bizarre in a way that makes Kravitz feel almost like he’s in a dream. This is so far from the everyday reality from what he’d been expecting out of this pretty shitty Wednesday that it’s almost a relief when his watch’s alarm beeps. Lunch is winding down and it’s time to get back to work — with a sigh, Kravitz remembers that he hasn’t had a chance to so much as sit down, let alone eat the slurry of granola and fruit that’s going cold on the counter. He can’t carry that back with him, but the thought of trekking back to work and getting through the rest of the work day with nothing to eat makes Kravitz’s stomach gurgle.

Unexpectedly, something in the barista’s smirking face softens. The look he gives Kravitz isn’t quite gentle, too tinged with spiteful amusement on the edges of his pity, but it is enough to send hopeless flutters of excitement to Kravitz’s fingertips. The case holding the restaurant’s pastries lets out a faint hiss as he tugs it open and glances back at Kravitz. “You like Belgian waffles, my guy?”

Kravitz does.

It must show on his face as clear as a signal flare in the dead of night, because the corners of those glittering eyes crinkle in amusement as the barista laughs. Kravitz has never heard him laugh before, never seen so much as a genuine smile, so the sight sends electricity sparking through his veins in a way he was wholly unprepared for.

“Gotcha, darling,” he hears, heart pounding in his ears violently enough to make the words sound distant. “These are on the house, by the way, since you’re in here like all the time, probably the most loyal customer I have and also not a total asshat most of the time —”

His heartbeat gets louder and he starts to come unstuck from his own body, barely registers it when a cheap brown paper bag filled with treats gets pressed into his hands and the barista waves him out the door. Ango calls a cheerful farewell after him and the bells above the entrance jingle as he makes his way out. Stumbling feet keep moving without any real input from his conscious brain and before he knows it, he’s in the middle of the courtyard, the scent of fresh waffle overpowering his senses.

That was the longest he’d ever had a conversation not related to work in ages, Kravitz thinks, his heart’s inconveniently painful thundering in his chest starting to slow back down despite the spikes it gets when he remembers the smiling curve of those lips. And he’d had it with someone who was so far out of Kravitz’s league that he might as well be in outer space, who had laughed and given him a gift for being a loyal customer, a whole bag of free pastries.

A bag with something written on it in sparkling gold Sharpie. Not having had the foresight to bring his reading glasses with him to lunch, Kravitz squints, pulls it closer to his face as he powerwalks back to his building and tries to decipher the scribbling.

_Taako ❤ (555) 459-0800_

Kravitz immediately collides with a telephone pole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feelin' tempted to continue this but god only knows if i actually will. so it’s “complete” for now, but i might go back in and add more chapters. i thought about a whole universe for this one-off modern au and now i really want to talk about magnus’s lucrative custom amiibo sculpting etsy business, is the thing?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako grabs a bite to eat with Magnus Burnsides, Love Expert.

When Taako had passed his number to a hot guy that liked Belgian waffles, scribbled it on a warm pastry bag and pointedly ignored Angus’s excited chirping, he had fully expected the guy to never call.

The thing about Taako’s life is that it’s pretty boring. Not a whole lot happens that’s exciting or new, especially not now that time has rolled along so fast that it’s almost Angus’s tenth birthday; if you’d asked ten year old Taako what he expected his life to be like, you’d probably get a way different answer than the truth of “single parent renting half a house from his own retired father, no romantic prospects and barely any friendship ones outside of weekly Bowling Night with Carey & Killian & Johann”. That was a mouthful a lot harder to swallow than the then-decided answer of “Broadway!” that ten year old Taako had been so determined to make real.

Twenty nine year old Taako? He works at Jamba Juice and keeps his spare change in a sock.

So he doesn't have guys banging down his door to, well,  _bang_. That's just a fact of life and Taako's fine with it, even if it will sting when that guy eventually never calls and that'll probably make his job awkward. He'd taken a risk that he expected to fail, so if it fails, he's already prepared himself for the worst.

In the end, Hot Guy doesn’t call.

He texts.

According to the goddamn novella that lights up Taako’s phone over brunch the next morning, Hot Guy’s name is Kravitz. He’s twenty seven years old and owns a Rottweiler named Hana. Hot Guy Kravitz apparently works as an accountant because he actually likes numbers, and when even that _Jeopardy_ -ass trivia about him makes Taako grin, he knows he’s in trouble.

Hot Guy Kravitz also has the worst timing, because he texts while Taako is at brunch with Magnus, which ends up being a whole _thing_.

“You’re making that face again,” says Magnus, words muffled around the three different varieties of croissant he’s shoved in his mouth at once. It’s an unholy sight, made worse by the way cheese, ham, and an unidentifiable green vegetable leak into his beard as he speaks. Taako, who is both used to how Magnus goes to town on brunch and utterly ashamed to be seen in public with someone who eats like one of the pigs out of Spirited Away, is doing his best to ignore it.

But Magnus is Magnus, so ignoring him is a plan that’s always doomed from the outset, given that Magnus can rarely be deterred from something he’s decided to pay attention to. Despite dropping his eyes back to his phone and reading the words _would you like to get dinner tonight if you’re free_ over and over again, Taako can’t shake the sticky feeling of that patented “I must be acknowledged, because I am thirty-three minutes older and thus my word is law, duh” stare still glued to Taako’s forehead. Doesn’t matter that they’re both adopted; doesn’t matter that their dad already had two kids before them who are both substantially older. Magnus is the big brother and that’s that.

Because Magnus is Magnus.

Taako might as well humor him.

“What face?”

Another croissant materializes among the horde. “The gooey eyes. You told me to tell you when you did that, and I quote, ‘sappy shit’, so I am.”

When Taako swaps over from his texts to the front-facing camera, he’s furious to discover that Magnus is right. It’s been so long since he’s even thought about getting back out in the dating world — _Angus is almost ten_ — that he’s acting like a lovestruck teenager all over again. He banishes the camera app to an unnamed folder in disgust and sighs.

“Guy trouble?” Magnus asks, cheeks bulging and words muffled with his relative chipmunk horde of croissants.

There’s a wonderful thirty seconds where Taako entertains the idea of not telling Magnus about Kravitz. The cute guy he sees on a regular basis and tries to flirt with to no real avail isn’t something worth telling anyone, but also, a boyfriend is barely worth sharing, either. In that fantasy, he can maintain privacy — and then his fantasy is broken when he runs into Carey and Killian on their date at a nice restaurant, or Julia and Magnus while they’re dogwatching at the park, or a crying Johann sitting in some secluded spot he might want to make out with Kravitz in.

No way is he keeping this a total secret. Taako might as well cut the gossip mill off at the pass now while he can.

“Just some guy who asked me to dinner,” he says with a rehearsed casual wave of a hand, realizing too late that some of the effect is lost, because Magnus has definitely seen him practice that same jaunty gesture. “No big.”

“So what are you gonna do?” Magnus asks, leaning forward on both elbows. “You going on a date with him? You gonna get engaged and ask him to move in and introduce him to Angus?”

Another thing about Magnus — and there are many, many things about Magnus that Taako is painfully privy to — that Taako alternately loves and loathes is his highly selective understanding of what the word “tact” could possibly mean. It wasn’t like Magnus meant ill to anyone, or at least, not most people, and definitely not Taako; it was just that sometimes his enthusiasm ran away with him and dragged everyone else kicking and screaming in its wake. His barrage of questions came from a place of Magnus wanting the same comfortable married life that he had with Julia for his currently-single brother, so it’s obvious that Magnus isn’t _trying_ to overwhelm him.

But it’s still a little overwhelming, and the big lug is still his playful, goofy brother, which means there’s zero chance in hell that Taako’s missing out on a chance to rib him back.

Gnawing on the edge of a once-manicured fingernail, Taako raises an eyebrow. “Is that life plan you’ve got going for me supposed to happen in that order, Magpie? Also, that’s a hard no from me on everything except the date — which is a maybe, don’t make that Dreamworks face at me — and meeting Angarang, which already happened."

Magnus, ever-undeterred, leans in further. His gleaming brown eyes are impossibly big.

“He met Angus already?”

Heat blossoms on Taako’s cheeks as he slides back to keep an acceptable amount of distance between him and his enthusiastic brother, who is currently a half-step away from yelling in a public restaurant at 10 in the morning.

“Not on purpose, my man,” he says, watching as Magnus’s shoulders deflate a little bit and feeling the tiniest twinge of guilt.

In truth, it had maybe been on purpose.

Maybe, in a hypothetical world where Taako had allowed himself the luxury of thinking about potential long-term setups, the question of Angus had always been the first thing Taako had worried about. In every manifestation of that hypothetical conversation with himself about an attractive man who might not be seriously interested in him in the first place after all — and might not still be, even if he does want to get dinner — in that train of thought that absolutely wasn’t real, Taako could never figure out how to explain Angus in words. How important he was. How much Taako loved him. How he came to be.

(Not to mention how much Taako would bodyslam anyone if they tried to hurt him.)

Words were unreliable. They failed, they faltered, they got stuck in his throat so painfully that they disappeared before he could ever use them.

So it was a possibility that Taako had hatched a deliberate plan to use the simplest words possible, where Bring Your Kid To Work Day wasn’t a thing that was real and instead had been something he’d just suggested to Angus, a solution to yank that emotional Band-Aid off before anyone got too invested. The rest of all Taako’s awkward, difficult truths were all tangled up in the simple fact that Angus existed, anyway, so they could all follow in the trail of that bombshell and he’d have an easier time explaining them.

But Magnus definitely doesn’t need to know any of that, no matter how much Taako trusts him to keep it under wraps. As much as Taako would never admit it any time other than on Magnus’s birthday or his own deathbed — for a very rational fear it would quadruple Magnus’s ego — he trusts him more than anyone.

“If I did have a wedding,” Taako says, a breadcrumb of brotherly consolation, “You’d probably be my best man.”

The table shakes with the sudden, explosive force of Magnus’s laughter, which makes Taako huff in a fit of indignation that’s only half for show.

“I totally have other friends that could be my best man,” he says, but the words barely sound believable to his own ears as he says them, let alone Magnus’s. “What about Merle?”

“Okay, one, it’s kind of sad that Dad is the first person you think of when you say ‘friend’,” Magnus tells him. “And B, you know he’s going to be the one to give you away if he has to fight ten other dads and a wedding coordinator in a cage match to the death. Don’t even trip.”

“He could —“

“He can’t do both. There’s wedding rules and that’s one of them.”

Skeptical that those wedding rules are real things anyone else follows — aka, 99% sure they’re a Magnus Burnsides original — but willing to let it slide for now, Taako knits his brows and returns to reviewing the list of candidates for non-Magnus best men.

Angus is definitely going to be the ringbearer, so he’s out; Davenport might work with Lucretia, but he’s kind of creepy, so uh no; Johann and Roswell are possible, but they also both wept uncontrollably at Magnus’s wedding, which meant they would both be useless, and anyway, Roswell isn’t a man. Does a best man have to be a man, anyway? If not, that widens his pool, but not by much. He could probably ask Killian, but Carey had also also cried at that wedding, not to mention her own, so he didn’t want to separate Killian from an emotional Carey. That would just be cruel.

Everyone else considered, that leaves —

_Oh_.

When the answer finally dawns on him, it’s so simple that Taako wants to slap himself.

“Stephen.”

Acting as if he’s suffered a mortal blow, Magnus collapses back in his chair. One hand presses palm up against his forehead as people start turning over to look, but Taako’s having fun, so he forces himself to tune their stares out and keep playing along.

“My own son turned against me,” Magnus groans. “You know I can’t deny him anything, you monster! How would you even get him up to the altar?”

Taako leans in. Smugness at having won this particular joust is enveloping him so thoroughly that he can almost feel it leaking out of his own pores. It’s a good feeling, especially when Magnus shoots him a wink and a nod to keep going, and he can see their waiter watching with no real judgement in her concealed laughter in the far back.

“I’ll put his tank on wheels and roll it up myself.”

Stephen Burnsides — beloved son of Julia and Magnus and winner of the family award for Best Smile the past six years in a row — is, of course, a fish.

Before Magnus can dramatically flail around anymore in pretend agony, finally succumbing to the knowledge that a fish was equally as viable a best man as he was, not to mention wounded in having the knowledge that he’s lost today’s Goof-Off to his younger brother, Taako’s phone chimes. Accompanied by a battery warning the nervous yellow of a phone that hasn’t been charged in a while and needs a jolt, the alert he wrote to himself that morning reads _PICK ⬆️ ANGUS @ ⛸ NOW_ , caps and emoji and all.

He tilts the screen toward Magnus, who reads the message upside down and brightens, as Taako fumbles in his bag for a tenner to leave on the table.

“I could drive you, see Angus,” Magnus offers. He’s entirely too excited about the idea for a man who literally lives next door to Taako and — again, quite literally — sees his nephew every day of the year.

“Go back to work,” Taako says instead. “Dad’s making dinner and I’m leaving Angoogle at his place, so you’ll see him then.” Magnus, who has never done anything formally- or even faux-military in his life, salutes. With a roll of the eyes and a tiny wave, Taako turns to go.

“Hey, T,” Magnus calls.

Hand on his hip and mostly distracted by the cellphone in his hand, Taako glances back.

“Go for it,” Magnus says, a surprising amount of sincerity in his eyes. “I mean it, man. It’ll go great.”

There’s a swell of emotion in Taako’s chest as he wrestles with things he could say, all of them too sappy and too overwhelmingly emotional in the face of Magnus’s endless support, so instead he just gives a thumbs up. Magnus returns the gesture twofold, so Taako turns back to his phone with newfound bravery and taps out a quick message to — as he’s now known in Taako’s phone — _KRRRRRAVITZ_. His finger hovers over Send for one, two, three seconds, and then he taps it and he’s done and his words are staring him back in the face.

_ok. taako here. where do u live? ill swing by @ 8_

Butterflies burst to life in his stomach and he pushes open the exit door, feeling a smile curve up the edges of his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year's eve. this is the last thing i wrote this year and i'm glad for it. i'll hopefully do more in 2017!
> 
> p.s. thanks for the super nice comments? i get so easily overwhelmed by talking to other people that i can’t respond to all of them (or even comment on other fics, as much as i LOVE the stuff all y’all put out, ‘cause trying to do that makes me so nervous i forget how to type entirely) but i read every single one over and over and they all make me smile a lot so thank you
> 
> edit: formatting can suck my nuts


	3. Chapter 3

Their plan is for Taako to pick him up at eight, which means Kravitz is fully dressed and lingering in the living room at seven.

He paces for ten minutes and tries to watch an episode of something he doesn’t really care about for another twenty, but the things he’d thought while pacing and the events he’d watch unfold on the screen escape him as soon as they’re finished. On a better day, he’d play fetch with Hana and try to keep her from destroying his apartment as she ran in circles, which was kind of a game in and of itself. But this was a weekend that his mom had wanted Hana to come visit, so the dog bed in the corner is empty and the chew toys by the fireplace have gone unblemished.

Killing time, he checks over his texts yet again and — accepting the inevitable — decides to spend the half hour that’s left doing paperwork.

Telling Taako that he loved doing his job hadn’t been a lie, not technically.

The truth was that Kravitz did love numbers. He loved thinking about all the ways everything made sense with math, knowing that there was always an answer to something unless the question was wrong, puzzling through things he didn’t understand yet but wanted to.

But the other side of that coin was that he's  _terrible_ at his job.

Math might have been one of Kravitz’s passions, but accounting didn’t come easy for him. He’d fallen ass-backwards into working at that firm, and because he was one of the only people willing to actually try, he’d outlasted nearly three dozen coworkers that had been less determined to see it through. Maybe it takes him twice as long to set up spreadsheets and go back over faulty data to find what was wrong as it does his coworkers when they actually try. So what?

All he has to do is get absorbed in his work and the melody of the numbers helps carry him through.

He gets so absorbed in it that half an hour goes by in the beat of a heart, and the resounding knock at the door jolts him so badly that both of his knees slam into his desk. Paperwork goes flying. Kravitz doesn’t bother picking it up on his own flight to the door.

When he steps out to greet his date, the words die in his throat.

Date night is an entirely different look on Taako. Kravitz’s heart pounds in his chest as he struggles to memorize every single thing he can about the sight before him, even knowing they’ll have a whole evening together — on his doorstep, Taako is sparkling a thousand times more than he ever has in the dim florescent lighting of Jamba Juice, nails painted a glittering gold and those everyday leftover flecks of eye makeup having multiplied into a heavy, freshly-applied meeting of eyeliner, mascara, eyeshadow, all working together seamlessly. Gone are the cheap silver studs, replaced by golden hoops with matching clips. And whoever designed the Jamba Juice uniform was both truly evil and a godsend all at once, because it’s only becoming clear at this late hour that it had not been nearly flattering as flattering on Taako as it could have been.

It particularly hadn’t been as flattering as the clothes Taako has picked out himself tonight, leggings and short shorts and a snug sweater covered in tiny heart prints. Looking at Taako, gorgeous and palpably content to be there, Kravitz gets why people in Greek myths would spout compliments about someone else so much that they pissed off the Greek gods.

Then there are things Kravitz had expected but hadn’t prepared himself nearly enough for; his heart wasn’t expecting to deal with the way Taako looks when his hair is down, messy in a way that still looks deliberately put together, or how those sparkling bangles and their half-dozen new friends jingle softly with the small movements of Taako’s hand, like they are in this endless moment as Taako waves a hand in front of his face.

Taako is waving a hand in front of his face, eyebrows raised.

Kravitz has not been subtle.

“You’re — good,” he says, fumbling over the words with a tongue that’s suddenly so impossibly heavy. “I mean, you look good. That looks good on you.”

When Taako (predictably) starts laughing in response to his stammering, Kravitz doesn’t feel like he’s being laughed _at_. It’s a sincere, pleased sound, edged with a little bit of embarrassment.

“Thanks,” says Taako, and he waits until Kravitz has secured the door behind him before starting to move closer.

Out of the blue, there’s a moment of hesitation that he sees his own thought process. It’s a three-second pause where Kravitz can tell that Taako is deciding whether or not to link arms with him, a familiar dance of weighing the pros against the cons in a series of tiny eye movements and throwing himself into a decision right when it might start to become awkward for the other person. He thinks that’s something to remember, too — Taako seeming as equally anxious as he is about their date, despite being better at hiding it, in how to act and what to do.

It makes the fact that Taako goes ahead and cuddles up against him that much better.

“I had to park a little down the block,” Taako offers, starting off to where his car must be and almost dragging Kravitz — who’s still, in truth, heavily distracted from where Taako’s body is pressed flush up against his arm with thoughts of warm warm warm. “You’ve got like, _garbagé_ parking here, Krav! Not even a resident parking lot for guests to use? Do you all just use the parking spaces on the street?”

“Yeah,” he manages. “I — _fuck_!”

He’s collided with a rearview mirror thigh-first, and Taako laughs again, giving the hood of the car a fond thump with his fist.

“This is me!”

_Me_ is a rusted, beaten-up Corvette that is almost certainly older than Taako. There’s three different set of fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, McDonald’s HappyMeal boxes mixing with bags of thrift store finds in the back, and a Furby watching him from the dashboard.

It is very, very Taako.

Kravitz tries not to worry about it breaking down mid-transit by turning his mind anywhere but the utterly dented fender.

“By the way, where are we going?” he asks instead, clambering in and feeling the unease of a dangerous decision weigh down on him. “In your text, you said you wanted to pick, so I didn’t make reservations.”

The snicker he gets in response is nothing short of dastardly.

“Well, I know this great little place called Jamba Juice,” starts Taako, face so stony serious that Kravitz thinks he had to have imagined the snickering.

And Kravitz’s distress must be _audible_ , for the way that Taako doesn’t even have to glance over before he starts laughing again. He’s cackling over the thundering of the starting engine like it’s the funniest thing in the world, the idea of taking Kravitz to Jamba Juice on a date, and his eyes are scrunched up in unbridled glee.

“I’m fucking with you!” Taako says, clarifying what was already obvious in a way that manages to be charming to Kravitz nonetheless. “I am never ever setting foot in one of those places when I’m off the clock, you kidding? Taako’s off, baby, no way they can drag me back into management hell when I’m not gettin’ paid. When I’m not there, Lucas is the one who corporate hired to be my understudy — which sucks ‘cause he sucks, he keeps ditching and making Ren fill in, but I would way rather have her there in the first place — so they practically beg me to come back.”

While Taako goes on about the intricacies of Jamba Juice’s infrastructure and the many flaws of Lucas, who is apparently _a little shit who I think stole our broken ice machine_ , Kravitz studies the profile of his face, the soft slope of his cheeks, the gentle set of his jaw.

Noticing his eyes, Taako shoots him a sideways glance a few minutes into this detailed examination.

“Dude.”

His eyes snap forward again to the boring road.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to — sorry.”

He sees Taako bite his lip out of his peripheral vision and struggles not to look over again.

“No, it’s fine,” Taako says. His hands clench tighter around the steering wheel “It’s just — lemme be honest here, since there’s no point in beating around the dead horse, or anything. I’m not used to it, you know? The whole staring thing. Or like, staring like _that_.”

More than anything else tonight, that’s what surprises Kravitz. The idea that people wouldn’t see how great Taako was, no matter how different tastes might be.

“I think you’re —“

“I know,” Taako interrupts, all bravado again in a way that Kravitz is starting to suspect is false. “I’m great to look at, right? But people don’t know what they're missing.”

Kravitz opens his mouth, then closes it again when he realizes there’s nothing he can think of to say that isn’t they have no idea. The silence barely lasts, though; they pull into a parking lot before he can blink. As soon as they’re out of the car and it’s locked up, Taako is beside Kravitz again, offering a hand. Kravitz stares at it for two seconds that are entirely too long.

“Do you want to hold —“ Taako starts, but Kravitz has already reached back and is lacing his fingers through Taako’s. His quick resolution of the situation earns him another genuine, shy smile that sets his heart pounding so loud he can barely hear the server greet them as they walk in.

The meal goes smoothly, all things considered. Kravitz had shot for semi-formal in clothing, which is good, because Taako brings them to some place that has upsettingly fancy decor for how many kids are running around screaming. The curtains are clean velvet but the menus are stained plastic. It’s a puzzling contradiction that probably has its roots in a hefty maintenance budget.

“My kid likes it here,” Taako says as he settles in to one particular booth in the corner, then immediately flicks open a menu, considering the choice explained. Looking around and recalling the brief meeting he’d had with that perky junior employee — who he’s since learned in text exchanges with Taako is nine and named Angus — he can see it.

It helps that they’re in a quiet corner, too, because for most of dinner he keeps getting distracted by the way Taako curls long locks of hair around his finger as he talks and is already having a hard enough time focusing to listen without staring at his lips. Had the screams been any less distant, he might have missed the things Taako told him about Angus ( _great kid, you saw that, right, he told me to tell you that he’s won the reading contest four years in a row_ ) or the rest of family ( _all of ‘em live right by me, fuckin’ — fuckin’ terrible for privacy but great for_ Project Runway _night_ ) or his job ( _I can never eat yogurt again_ ) that Taako spills forth like water from a fountain right up to the moment when they’re back in the car again.

Which is when it hits him that he could kiss Taako good night.

_Oh_.

Their ride home is quiet, but most of that is Kravitz’s fault. He’s engrossed in his own head in an endless debate about summoning the courage to kiss, the courtesy not to force a kiss, on and on forever.

In the end, they’re his street and he hasn’t done a thing.

“You can pull up in front of my apartment here, you don’t have to park,” he finally says, staring down at his hands and regretting the predetermined knowledge that he won’t make a move because he’s a coward.

As it turns out, that’s fine, because the car has barely pulled to a stop in sight of his front door before Taako is gently guiding Kravitz’s face to his own to kiss him.

He’s kissed people before. Drunk New Years Eve parties, drunk Halloween parties, drunk Valentine’s parties — his boss really needs to stop giving his office alcohol for every single party — he’s hit the whole circuit, not even counting his handful of experiences with other guys. But he’s nervous in a whole new way with Taako, so caught up in worrying that his lips are too chapped or his technique is bad that he’s only just started getting into the kiss when it ends.

When Taako pulls back, far enough that Kravitz’s unconscious lean after him amounts to nothing.

“Angus of Green Gables is waiting, so I gotta get home,” he says, eyes taking in Kravitz’s expression, anxious for no readily apparent reason. “You good?”

Kravitz has to swallow and take a breath or two before answering, because he’s too good, and he’s worried all those gushing emotions are going to come pouring out of his mouth all at once.

“I — thank you,” he says, pushing all that discarded courage into reaching up to brush a lock of Taako’s hair back into place, melting in turn at the way Taako’s eyes soften at the gesture. “You’re funny, and gorgeous, and — I’ll text you about another time?”

Taako grins, wiggling his fingers while Kravitz backs out of the car reluctantly.

“I’ll hold you to that, beefcake.”

_Beefcake?_

Thrown for a loop by the term of endearment in a way darling and babe hadn’t caused, completely uncertain what it could possibly mean, he settles for the neutral middle ground of waving and smiling awkwardly as Taako starts the car. The Furby stares back at him as he watches it go.

Half an hour after Taako drives off and long after he's decided to content himself with playing the night over and over in his mind until he can muster up the strength to text again Kravitz is all settled into bed with his pajamas on, Netflix playing in the background.

That’s the precise moment he remembers to Google “beefcake”.

The results make him choke on his own spit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this updates on saturdays now! it’s all planned out and will be fourteen chapters in total, please look forward to everything that comes next for these two ♫
> 
> p.s. i love everything i’ve seen of [sprigganart](http://sprigganart.tumblr.com)’s taako so i shot him a message about drawing taako & angus in jamba juice uniforms, and he was an awfully good sport who did a killer job with my bizarre commission request. for anyone who wants to see that, [here it is](http://i.imgur.com/UQJhpqs.png)!


	4. Chapter 4

Taako wakes up to two very different sounds.

The first is the soft, muffled echo of a familiar ringtone, _t-t-treat me like a pirate_ playing and stuttering over itself somewhere from under his third duvet. That’s the noise Taako chooses to focus on first, because it means Kravitz is texting him — and going from the multiple awkward starts of the same twenty-second clip, texting him more than once, probably. Thinking about it makes his face heat up.

_Good morning. I saw a bird today that reminded me of you. The news said it was loose in the streets, then I saw it on my drive over after I got Starbucks… It was going so fast._

Taako outright cackles at the picture of a peacock Kravitz attaches, blurry and taken at a weird angle but undeniably an escaped resident of the local zoo fleeing down Main Street. He saves the picture in a folder he immediately names _FREEDOM!!!_ and texts Kravitz back.

_LOVE IT! goin 2 the mall w/ aang & jewel. have fun at work ok? _

_OK. That sounds like a nice day. Make sure you all dress warmly, I heard the temperatures are going to drop even more. I’ll text you at lunch break._

There’s a love you hovering on the tips of Taako’s fingertips, but it comes out as _:) xo_ and nothing else. They haven’t gone there yet — they’ve only been on six dates, for crying out loud, but Taako was never good with going slow emotionally. If he’s in it, he’s in it, and he’s (mostly) made peace with the fact that he’s all in with Kravitz.

However, he’s extra good at biting back any expression of that wholehearted investment. Too good. Sometimes Kravitz offers to drop him at home early if he’s not having fun, that’s how good Taako is.

Taako is also _also_ just bad at expressing it in ways other than curling up close or being too painfully obvious, which means he comes off as more aloof than he is in those uncomfortable instances, but Kravitz has actually started getting used to his bizarre turns of behavior enough to assume the true happy medium of Taako having a great time, which is both terrifying and thrilling. If he pulls away all of Taako’s bravado, is he still going to like everything else that’s there?

All of it?

_:^) Goodbye!_ blinks onto his screen, distracting him from his own self-pity as he melts again. Kravitz texts like he’s eighty years old and just starting to learn how a cellphone works, but it’s still charming to Taako, because he’s fallen hard and fast for this guy in a way he’d never expected when he brought Angus to work that day.

“It’s an emoji,” he says to himself, face half-buried in a pillow. “It’s a stupid smiley face with a nose and the word goodbye, you are a stronger man than this!”

He is not.

Stuffing his phone under a pillow in shame, Taako finally emerges from his heavy huddle of blankets enough to listen for that second noise that had woken him up. It’s weaker, distantly chiming from another room, but it’s also an urgent noise, one that demanded his attention.

With a sudden spike of concerned adrenaline, he realizes it’s that kitchen fire alarm he keeps forgetting to change.

“Kiddo?”

From outside his bedroom door, a frantic thump and a tiny, boy-sized yelp answers him.

“Don’t come in here!”

Already worried that Angus is having his daily crisis before the day even started, Taako hauls himself out of bed and rummages for the comfortable leopard print robe he usually tosses on the floor for chilly mornings like this one. They were usually near his slippers, which were probably by there door, so — another squeak from the kitchen distracts him enough for his eyes to land right on what he’s looking for.

“You saying that means I _gotta_ go in there now, pumpkin.”

From the other room, Angus wails in familiar exasperation. “Give me five minutes! No — ten! Ten, please!”

Robe acquired and M&M slippers located, Taako shuffles out the door and follows an array of worried noises peppered alongside the dejected beeping of a neglected smoke detector to their kitchen.

Nothing in the kitchen is on fire, which is both better and worse than he’d been anticipating. He gives Angus a once-over to make sure he hadn’t hurt himself at all — and it doesn’t seem like he has, although his crushed and heartbroken look makes Taako give him another glance — before turning his attention to the rest of the kitchen. His favorite pan is sitting on the stove with some bizarre, charred lumps inside it, the remains of whatever Angus had been making now thoroughly burned to a crisp. There’s mix on the counter, a bowl, three eggs sitting mostly in an empty egg carton — touched in a way he knows would be easier to read as amused, he takes stock of Angus’s failed first attempt at pancakes and ruffles his son’s hair fondly.

“I was trying to make breakfast for you and I ruined your favorite pan,” Angus says, slumping against Taako’s side. “That’s _never_ going to come out.”

That’s probably true, if the mysteriously brand new chip in the rim is anything to go off of. Taako doesn’t even know what’s happened in this kitchen while he was curled up in bed, except that it doesn’t seem like anything about it was good. But Angus looks so crestfallen that Taako shrugs it off, tugs him closer and ruffles his hair again.

“Don’t worry. S’just a pan, isn’t it? There’s like, millions of them. I have at least thirty. There’s only one you.”

His words are unbelievably sappy, but the tearful way Angus looks up at him makes them worthwhile, and anyway, it’s not like his own son is about to give him shit for being nice after a mistake.

Angus has plenty of other things to give him shit for already.

“Go ahead and wash up,” he says, crouching down to Angus’s eye level with both hands on his shoulders. “We’re going to the mall, so you have to be ready for Aunt Jewels to come pick us up soon, right? She’s really been looking forward to it.”

There’s a moment where Taako can nearly feel the excitement return to Angus, a tiny tremor in his impossibly small son. As much as Taako might pretend he doesn’t understand why having his family live on either side of him is so great, as much as Angus’s boundless enthusiasm for spending time with the chaotic horde far outpaces Taako’s, he does love knowing that everyone is right there for tiny, small things, people to spend time with to help him look after Angus. They’re a pro-bono babysitting troop, nearly, for how much they see him.

“Thank you,” Angus yells, losing control of his volume for those brief moments, but he’s already halfway out the kitchen before the words start trailing after him. “I love you, Dad, I have to get ready! Love you!”

There’s an old anxiety stuck to those words as they form in Taako’s throat, but it’s Angus, so it’s easier to get them out. “Love you, too, August! Thirty minutes!”

He listens for the slam of a bathroom door before pitching that burned pan in the garbage and hauling out another one. All the ingredients are still sitting on the counter, with plenty to spare — it’s not like Taako can get ready while Angus is rushing around. He might as well make breakfast.

“Pancakes sound good,” he mumbles to himself. “Kid had the right idea. Smart boy. Smarter than he should be, it’s all those books…”

It’s muscle memory to get them started and get going, just like it’s muscle memory to get lost in the familiar sensations of cooking. He’d worked in a restaurant’s kitchen, once, way before Angus was even a thought. That job was the reason Angus had ever even come to be, if he traced it back far enough, because it took two to tango and Taako’s old dance partner had been more than happy to become a regular at that one restaurant just for a chance to see him.

And that’s a train of thought about thoughts he doesn’t need to go down on a nice morning like this, so he doesn’t. Taako throws himself back into cooking, putting on flair for an audience that isn’t present, smiling at the dirty wall tile.

Then a chair squeaks as it’s pulled out from the counter behind him.

“Nice moves! Guess things are going great with your mystery man?”

Taako doesn’t even jump at the sudden sound of Julia’s voice. It’s seven in the morning, his hair (and frankly, his whole scene) is an utter mess, so these were prime “Suddenly, Julia!” hours. He’s half been expecting her to let herself in since the moment he rolled out of bed instead of calling like a normal person. A pancake sizzles and Taako flips it before glancing over his shoulder at his expectedly-unexpected guest. She’s taken up a spot on the counter, leaning across messy papers and stray headbands to smile at him, her smile just edging into being a little too toothy when contrasted against the relative gentleness she carries herself with.

Most people who deal with Julia think she’s the sweetest woman alive, and Taako isn’t about to say that they’re wrong — put together, she and Magnus are overwhelmingly kind enough to everyone they meet that it still sometimes flusters Taako. She just possess both infinite kindness _and_ the ability to be a mischievous bastard when she wants to be, and as her oldest friend and brother-in-law, Taako’s seen plenty of bastard-y Julia.

Like now. He’s seeing it right now, in her gigantic grin.

“Your elbow’s on Ango’s report card,” he says instead of answering her question, hoping she’ll take the bait to be a doting aunt.

But Julia being Julia, she carefully moves her elbow, taking only a few seconds to nod in pride at Angus’s perfect grades in his absence before returning to staring Taako down. The more dates he goes on with Kravitz, the more persistent his family gets about wanting to meet him — Magnus and Julia are two of the biggest culprits, the ever-curious about who can read Taako all too well and want to know who it is that makes his volume amp up in that one specific, awestruck way. Where Magnus is more prone to texting incessantly and just smiling in person, smiling in a way that mostly pisses Taako off, Julia loves surprise attacks to follow Magnus’s barrages of affection or questions.

“If you think you and Gift Of The Magnus are gonna pincer attack me like this, it isn’t happening, darling,” he continues. “You’re gonna have to work harder than that!”

She hums, pensive enough that he knows she’s got something else up her sweater sleeve. That’s never a hum without other intentions or the expectation that someone’ll crack under what she’s going to offer them next, not when Julia’s the one humming.

“What if I pitched in for you that Gucci purse you were looking at last time we went?” Julia asks, like she’s just throwing the idea out there into the world. “And that expensive jacket from H&M. Would you be interested in sharing some tidbits about what your guy is like then? Or, c’mon, just what he _looks_ like?”

Taako cracks.

It wasn't hard for him to, not really. He does want to talk about his dates, tell Julia and Magnus and even Merle everything, but somehow that makes it even harder to say anything. If he bares his soul and things don’t work out, then he was just the idiot who got emotionally invested for no reason and overhyped a guy who wasn’t that great up to his family. That’s happened before, up to and including the point where the guy actually fucking sucked, so Taako doesn’t want to make those same teenage mistakes.

But Taako can bare his soul for a new purse and a fur coat. Then he isn't the idiot who made something out of nothing and walked away empty-handed. Taako can especially do that with Julia, who’s been bartering for information out of him as long as they’ve known each other, because — as endlessly, frustratingly perceptive as she’s always been — she knows exactly how hard it is for him to share his feelings. Her careful wagering is something only the two of them, an exchange based in her acknowledgement that he didn’t want to bely how emotionally invested he was in anything and his willingness to accept her money when offered because she had proved a thousand times over that she never made financial decisions she hadn’t budgeted for. He pretends he’s gotten more out of the wager than he’s given away, and she pretends that he’s right.

To everyone else, even Magnus, it’s a mystery how Julia can wrangle so many emotional truths out of Taako. They all award her Family Best Negotiator and don’t dwell on it.

Taako flips a pancake and sighs, because he’s already decided to tell her everything.

“His name is Kravitz,” he starts, and Julia groans.

“I know that!”

“His name is Kravitz,” Taako says, repeating and giving her a sour face over his shoulder. “And he’s tall. And jacked, even though he doesn’t work out, so he’s also sorta soft, which is super hot? He works as an accountant, but he’s like, busting outta his suit and tie, it’s ridiculous.”

Giggles ring from behind him and he glances back to see Julia alight with enthusiasm. Her warm face is glowing with happiness for Taako in a way he hasn’t seen since she first laid eyes on Angus, smile beaming wide. Encouraged, confidence boosted enough at the sight of her obvious delight, he keeps going.

“He has a huge-ass dog, her name is Hana, and he’s fine with her meeting you and Magnus if I ever bring him over,” Taako says, listening to Julia hiss _yes_ under her breath but acting like he hadn’t heard. “We met while I was at work, but he took too damn long to say anything, so I gave him my phone number and that was that.”

“What was your first date like?” she asks, captivated, but cautious enough that he knows she’ll drop it if he’s too uncomfortable with prying.

Taako thinks about that magical first date, bringing a hand to his face at the memory of how Kravitz’s lips had felt against his own. He thinks about the dates they’d had since — aquarium, movie theater, park, fancy restaurants — and the way Kravitz had slowly gotten more comfortable, more sure in holding lacing his fingers through Taako’s.

He looks back at Julia and mulls the idea over. She grins, gives him a tiny thumbs up of encouragement that's so like Magnus it makes him fond, her whole body leaning forward in enthusiasm that makes Taako think he isn't really that stupid for finding all these tiny, insignificant things about Kravitz so great. It's entirely possible that he's found one in a million, here, one who wouldn't mind if Taako said he was in love after a handful of dates, one who already doesn't mind hearing everything and anything about his son.

Maybe Kravitz is the kind of person he can tell his best friends everything about.

So Taako tells her everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy sunday and sorry for the delay! meant to post this yesterday afternoon but i ate three family-sized chicken pot pies while i was working on formatting this for ao3 and went into a deep pot pie sleep for twelve hours. thanks for reading, see you next week!


	5. Chapter 5

After he starts going on dates with Taako, Kravitz’s lunch breaks become something very different.

He still sits at the table by the window to sneak peeks at Taako, but now he doesn’t have to pretend he isn’t staring. Now, when Taako glances back, Kravitz feels something secure and comfortable in giving him a tiny smile. In some ways, the awe of knowing something so unfamiliar before has started to fade when he glimpses glitz-free Taako at work; but in other ways, that only makes the little things he’s discovering one by one stand out more. Sometimes Taako laughs so hard at a joke — or something that isn’t funny at all, objectively, like a melted SpongeBob Popsicle on a sidewalk — that his nose scrunches up and his laughter gets a little too close to wheezing. Sometimes he starts humming without realizing it, or lets his head droop when his mind wanders, or a million other tiny gestures Kravitz hadn’t seen manifest as clearly when he’d only looked sidelong at Taako under the pretense of boredom.

He can take his time, now, and it’s _incredible_.

The two of them have been talking near-endlessly through text or whatever snippets of conversation they can share, enough that Kravitz doesn’t particularly mind if there are some subjects that make Taako a little bit jumpy. Even if that list of subjects seems to skew more towards a lot rather than a few. God only knows Kravitz has his own hangups. Sometimes he has to let Taako’s hand go, head home a little earlier than planned, ask that maybe next time they don’t go to a café with an open mic night specifically for rock musicians.

That whole disaster had been an awkward, uncomfortable hour and a half, both of them worn out by the energy in the room long after they’d left, but what came next — a quick dash into the beautiful, tucked-away wooden area just behind that bar, where Taako had whispered that he might _like you a hell of a lot, just letting you know_ — made both their headaches well worth it, in hindsight.

In turn, Kravitz simply commits those areas of stalled conversation to memory, filing them away for whenever Taako trusts him enough to talk about them. They haven’t been dating long, and Taako’s already given him more than Kravitz senses he’s used to giving up to random dates. Kravitz knows Taako is adopted, that he has a great singing voice, that when he was ten he’d shoplifted three flavored Chapsticks and a tiara from a local Claire’s.

Their cautious balance seems to be working fantastically so far.

“That tie looks good on you,” Taako says, one particular Wednesday as he’s handing over Kravitz’s change. “Like, fuckin’ killer, did you make some bargain with the devil or something? Also, you free Friday night?”

Letting their hands linger together as Taako passes over the coins, feeling his boyfriend linger for the same reason, Kravitz takes a few seconds to refocus before he nods. “I should be. Is there something you want to do?”

There’s a beat. Taako tugs himself free and turns back to the cash register, thinking, before he seems to make up his mind. Then he glances back up at Kravitz with a mischievous glimmer in his eyes that’s long since become a familiar, steady part of Taako’s broad repertoire of expressions.

“Do you like bowling?” Taako asks.

“Bowling?” Kravitz responds, almost incredulous. Had someone reached into his brain and extracted a top hundred list of date ideas he’d expected to hear from Taako, they would have discovered that bowling ranked so far below things like _watching a movie_ or _building a time machine to compete on Fear Factor_ that merely the idea of it had completely blindsided Kravitz. He also isn’t prepared for Taako to reach out and tug Kravitz a little closer by the tie, nearly whispering. It shouldn’t be romantic. They’re in a Jamba Juice and a bone-thin man sitting in the corner of the room is staring at the two of them while they talk about bowling, for the love of all things neatly ironed.

The whole thing still feels absurdly romantic.

“My friends and I kinda have this informal bowling schedule,” Taako says, voice so hushed that it seems like a top-class secret, despite being the most innocuous fact in the entire world. “We get drunk, bowl a few rounds, eat some of the nasty-ass hot wings they’ve got in that shithole of a bowling alley. It’s a good time, my guy.”

Hanging on the edge of that description are a couple of loaded things, the impact of which aren’t lost on Kravitz at all. Taako’s inviting him to a social event with friends, ones that he’s heard about but never had the chance to meet. And Kravitz is Kravitz, and the idea makes him all sweaty in ways he hadn’t expected to be in the middle of a workday. He’s not good with new people, because he’s not good with people, in general. What if they hate him?

Oh, God, what if they hate him?

“That sounds fun,” he says. The most milquetoast answer possible to the most innocent question, as if Kravitz isn't deeply, profoundly agonizing over it in a way he thought he'd moved past with Taako.

“Can you come?” 

If it was anyone else, Kravitz knows he’d have said no in a heartbeat. But this is Taako, and these are Taako’s friends, who are (apparently) super chill. This wouldn’t be too bad of an experience, no matter how rowdy they got. It might even be a chance to learn new things, and besides, this is Taako offering another hesitant line into a personal life he’d have every reason to keep separate from Kravitz.

So he massages the muscle in the back of his neck that’s starting to get a little bit sore at this angle and nods.

Taako kisses Kravitz — for all that the tiny, insignificant but utterly earth-shaking physical gestures he’s so fond of are things Kravitz is starting to get used to, kissing Taako will probably always knock him off balance. There’s a feeling of contentment to it no matter where they are, like Taako’s so delighted to simply _be_ with Kravitz that it rubs off. He might be halfway decent at covering up how he feels about some things, especially the endings of certain movies, but when Kravitz kisses him, everything Taako is feeling and thinking seems as plain as day. If he’s distracted by something in the distance, it’s transparent in the slight tilt of his head; if he’s tired, or fully engaged, or a thousand other things, Taako doesn’t bother hiding it when there’s kissing to be focusing on in its place.

Kravitz, who still hasn’t perfected the painfully precise art of what to do with his hands, can only hope that his feelings are coming across so clearly. In the way their kisses always leave Taako smiling, he strongly suspects that his every thought is practically a bullhorn, which is at least half of what makes it a shame to pull back every time, this time being no particular exception.

“I have tomorrow off, so I’ll see you Friday,” Taako says, thumb wiping at the smudged edges of that root beer lip balm that Kravitz can still taste on his own lips. “Text me?”

Kravitz readjusts his tie; not quite content with how he’d done it, apparently, Taako leans across the counter and swipes it into a slightly different position. “I will.”

“And I’ll text you, a- _duh_ , so talk to you soon. Hope your friend finishes her gigantic smoothie monstrosity!”

The word friend catches on his cufflinks and he wants to tell Taako that it’s not exactly true, he and his one good coworker aren’t exactly pals the way Taako and his bowling buddies seem to be, that this was just a _welcome-back-hope-your-honeymoon-didn’t-suck_  and a _thanks-for-inviting-me-to-your-wedding_ gift, all bundled up in one. A terrible gift, at that. Who offers a smoothie to celebrate someone's marriage?

But Taako ducks back in for one more kiss on the cheek and the thought vanishes wholesale until he gets back into the office.

When Kravitz steps out of the elevator, smile still lingering on the edges of his lips and to-go smoothie cups in each hand, recently-married Hurley is leaning over the flimsy divider between his desk and hers in a way that makes him worried it’s about to snap at any moment.

"Sir, I can’t give you advice on committing tax fraud," she's saying, her voice as much of an exhausted tell to the length of this conversation as firm grip on the bridge of her nose is. “I — sir. Sir! I have a contractual responsibility to — I can't take a bribe to help you commit a _felony_! Do you understand who you're talking to?"

If Kravitz _was_ the type of person comfortable enough around others to make friends at work, Hurley would be the first person he'd turn to and the last one he'd send packing. She’s bustling with enough energy to get the results of ten people in their office combined, Kravitz firmly included, but she still manages to maintain excellent relations with everyone. There have been dozens of times over the last ten years where Hurley was offered promotions, or bigger case files, that she always turned down for the love of her job exactly as it is.

Hurley is, additionally but known to perhaps an even bigger chunk of the population than her ability to get results, someone unparalleled in her bluntness when provoked.

“You’re a garbage person,” she tells the invisible man on the other end of the line so suddenly that it makes Kravitz’s swallow of smoothie go down all wrong. “You are a _garbage person_ and I cannot help you. I’m officially closing your file. Please hold while I transfer you to the next available accountant.”

Kravitz watches as she, instead of pressing any of the required buttons for transferring a customer, simply drops her phone back in its cradle. It’s a few long, tired moments filled with the dismal sounds of Hurley groaning from her slumped-over position before she notices Kravitz standing there and fumbles to stand up like a normal person.

Nodding a hello, he offers the smoothie he hasn’t been taking sips out of. “Brought you something.”

“You’re like an angel with no wings,” she says.

“So like a person,” Kravitz quotes back.

This is a familiar game — Hurley, who was adept at anything and everything involving the cheesy TV shows her girlfriend ( _wife, now_ ) loves to watch together so much, and Kravitz, who was no stranger to solitary nights with only the company of Netflix, are near-entirely on the same wavelength when it comes to fun things that could be richly mined for any number of quotes.

Hurley had never quite understood the appeal of _Jane The Virgin_ like Kravitz did, but that was one lone exception in a sea of dozens that Kravitz could forgive. With a solemn nod at their rip-off standup routine having come to an end without a hitch, Hurley plops back down in her chair, letting the excess force spin her a little further than necessary.

 _Friend_.

Taako’s word choice hovers as Kravitz makes his way into his own cubicle, eyeing the wall that keeps the two of them separate.

It wouldn’t be hard to be friends with Hurley, who’s been extending casual invitations to do things outside of work for at least a year that Kravitz has always turned down out of the underlying, undeniable concern that he might not be that fun outside of work. That she might start avoiding him here, too, because he is pretty dull. And while they weren’t really friends, their half-stolen conversations are actually fun in a way that almost matches up with math. Kravitz would hate losing that.

On the other hand, she’d stuck it out far enough to invite him to her wedding, of all things. And Hurley was still talking to him after he’d made a royal disaster of eating half the salad bar and disappearing.

So he might as well at least _try_.

“How was your trip?” Kravitz asks.

A stubborn wheel screeches from her worn-down chair before Hurley pops back up over the divide, practically glowing with enthusiasm.

“Dude,” she says, brandishing a photo of a dark-haired woman — _Sloane, Hurley’s wife_ , he thinks — wearing enough sunblock for fifteen people and beaming next to a gaudy trophy. “Have you ever seen the inside of a NASCAR race car? The real thing? It’s _amazing_.”

For the second time that day, Hurley makes him choke on his smoothie — but then he’s laughing, nearly doubled over at how much more appropriate a roaring race track seems than anywhere warm, tropical, or beach-y. Kravitz had never known that Hurley liked racing, had never bothered to ask if the photos of cars she had hung up in her cubicle were hers or someone else’s.

He can see it, though, can picture Hurley and Sloane running from car to car the same way Taako had tugged him along to stare at all the weird, fuck-ugly fish in the aquarium last week.

“You wanted to get a VIP pass to NASCAR for your honeymoon? That’s what the two of you did?”

“Sloane and I want to tour NASCAR for every important anniversary until the day we both die,” Hurley corrects. “This was just the first time.”

And Kravitz has to set his smoothie aside because the good-natured grin Hurley is giving him, totally fine with his uncontrollable laughter, escalates into her own chuckles until the two of them are losing it in the middle of the office for a solid twenty minutes.

And it’s great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve been super ill for the past week to the point of being barely able to function, so if there’s any formatting errors i missed while slowly working through uploading this chapter, don’t hesitate to let me know ❤ and as always: thanks for your support!


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